Epilogue

Abstract

As someone who possesses an avid passion for literature, I confess a concomitant admiration for the epilogue. I relish the opportunity to absorb the words of authors—erudite or gritty—who hold court directly with the reader after the conclusion of some spellbinding tale. Of course, in the case of the preceding work, the fantastical and the fictional have been supplanted by the empirical and the editorial. Still, philanthropy remains, at its core, a love story as sweet as anything that romantic writers have ever dreamed up. This is not solely because of the etymological underpinning of the word (i.e., love and humankind). It is also because of the soft yet stubborn recognition that love confined to its noun form falls infinitely short of its potential; to be fully realized, love must always mature by becoming a verb. In short, love-as-verb is the sine qua non of true philanthropy. As many have pointed out, one can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving.